


pull me to the light

by sepiacigarettes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crying, Family Bonding, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sparring, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27550033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepiacigarettes/pseuds/sepiacigarettes
Summary: “Whatever happened to putting the mission first?” says Kolivan quietly.Keith flinches. He doesn’t know who it’s directed at.“We’ve lost too many,” Krolia answers. “I won’t live with the knowledge that I left a Blade here without help.” Then, “Especially you.”Keith’s heart aches. They used to talk about it on the whale, how important Kolivan and his mother considered each other.in which Keith joins the Blades and finds his family along the way
Relationships: Keith & Kolivan (Voltron), Keith & Krolia (Voltron), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 113





	pull me to the light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marleen3843](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marleen3843/gifts).



> For [Marleen](https://twitter.com/Marleen_4), who asked for a fic focusing on Keith's dynamic with Kolivan and Krolia.
> 
> I'm sorry for taking so bloody long with this, thank you for being so patient!!! 💛

> I’d let you in
> 
> But the weight of the world
> 
> Is over my shoulders
> 
> I buried it deep within my skin
> 
> The secrets and the sins
> 
> But my heart is dead and gone
> 
> Forever broken
> 
> I left it out to dry
> 
> In the corner of my eye
> 
> I’m bleeding out
> 
> Feels like I'm running out of time
> 
> Pull me to the light
> 
> I need a hand to
> 
> Guide me through the night
> 
> I can’t do this alone
> 
> — Imminence, _To The Light_

  
  


— K —

A fight:

Keith, a lifetime ago, slammed into the mat with Kolivan above him, teeth bared. Keith’s heart is racing, the beat quick enough to make him wonder if he could die like this. He almost wants to with the way the burning in his chest has only worsened since he left Voltron to join the Blades.

“Again, little one,” Kolivan intones, light glinting off his canines.

He’s exactly what a leader looks like, Keith thinks, tall, broad, sharp teeth. Nothing like Keith, with his smaller stature and blunt teeth and human skin.

“Again,” Kolivan repeats, on his feet in the blink of an eye.

For a moment Keith weighs up the options of not following orders. He ran away from Voltron to figure out who the fuck he was, but he doesn’t know if this was what he was looking for. The Blades all orbit each other with a kind of ease that Keith has never had. He feels like even more of an outsider.

“Again,” Kolivan says, a thread of warning in his voice this time.

 _Do I have to?_ he thinks. Is it not enough to lie here wanting to die? The loneliness is suffocating. He’s been broken so many times before, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be remade.

“Little one,” Kolivan prompts, the final word.

Keith groans, following suit.

— K —

A memory:

Light, fracturing across the sky, chasing him. The chemical smell of freshly cleaned Garrison hallways, the itchy collar of his uniform. A throbbing pain along his cheek, with the promise of a bruise in the coming days. The heavy cloud of dread hanging over him at what Shiro is going to say when he comes out of the Admiral’s office.

He knows what everyone says about him, that he shouldn’t be here, that he only got in because Shiro saw something in him. They don’t like him and that’s fine. Keith doesn’t like them either.

A sharp gasp cuts the air. It isn’t from the classmates who resent him, but Krolia.

His mother.

Not exactly what he thought he was getting into when Kolivan sent him on this mission. Who knew he’d discover what she was to him while they fled a Galra attack?

She's watching his memories.

“Were you lonely, kit?”

_Yes._

“Sometimes.”

Silence, but only from the two of them. There’s no silence on this space whale, only a buzzing ecosystem in which to learn to survive. Keith knows how to survive. He just doesn’t know how to survive _this—_ the way his _mother_ is looking at him.

“I’m so sorry.”

It’s too late for apologies though.

— K —

A revelation:

Feet pounding the earth, each step reverberating through his body like a shockwave. Harsh breaths, the kind that burn on the way in and never stick around long enough to actually soak into his lungs.

Kolivan’s voice, crowing, “Knowledge or death,” like a death knell.

And Shiro, running from him.

“Shiro... Wait!”

The aftermath comes upon him like a heatwave; grime on his neck, sweat dripping down his brow.

Kolivan tells him, “The only way this is possible is if Galra blood runs through your veins.”

And Keith was wrong, because this is the real heatwave now, the way blood is rushing into his ears. No, it can’t be—but then he doesn’t know that, because his Pops never had photos to show him of his mom, never told him where she was from apart from ‘far away’, only said she couldn’t stay with them—

“Galra?” he echoes.

A hand, Galra, landing on his shoulder, pulling him close. Shiro. “Let’s get back to the others, Keith.”

“Yeah,” he nods, dazed. “Yeah.”

It only hits home when Keith is sitting in his room later that quintant, Blade in his hand.

Galra. The ones in ships who hurt Shiro.

Galra. Like Sendak.

 _Galra._ Like his mother, like _him._

A sob, ugly and unbidden crawls out of him. Keith can’t stop it.

— K —

A surprise:

The rain comes to them softly, a stark difference to the attacks they faced on their way to the space whale. Keith wakes up to the sound of it hitting the roof of their shack, reminded of the storms in the desert back home.

The wolf is bounding in the puddles with abandon, pausing only to stare at Keith, tongue out, before prancing off again.

Keith laughs as he follows, tilting his head up to the rainfall.

Coolth pricks his face. Above him, the dark clouds and murky sky and golden flares of the quantum abyss.

Krolia doesn’t join him, staying under the cover of the shack instead. She scrunches her nose up at him. “I’m failing to see the enjoyment factor, kit.”

Keith makes a face at her. “It’s just water, Mom.”

Even now, the word feels heavy and foreign in his mouth.

 _Accept it,_ he tells himself.

They’ve been here for a year now. Keith wants this bond just as much as she does. He just had to wade through nearly two decades of resentment first.

Krolia’s ears flicker back. Her golden eyes assess the rainfall. “It’s all yours, kit.”

Keith laughs again, reaching for her hands. “Just give it a go.”

Krolia lets him pull her out into the open, making a face as the water hits her skin.

 _Galra really are like cats,_ he thinks as he leads her in a small circle. A year in each other’s space learning how to be a mother and son and yet Keith feels like the parent here, watching Krolia react to the rain.

She calls it quits after five minutes. Keith counts it as a win and chases after the wolf.

  
  


— K —

An initiation:

The coolth of the seat pressing into his shoulder blades, the neon lighting panels on the wall glowing Marmoran blue. Anticipation making his whole body feel like it consists of nothing but sparks, nerves making him wonder if his last meal will stay down.

“This is a rite of passage, little one,” says Ilun. “All Marmorans bear the mark.”

Hands on him, large enough to swamp him. Vrek. “Don't be afraid.”

Keith thinks of his Pops, and how the lightning storms would roll over the desert. They would shake the whole house and he’d tell Keith to be brave.

“I’m not scared,” Keith says, staring right back at Kolivan. “I know who I am.”

A smile, warm, approving. Originally Keith thought Kolivan did not smile. Turns out he was wrong.

“Good, little one,” says Kolivan, resting a hand on Keith’s head.

Oddly, Keith thinks of his Pops.

— K —

A lesson:

“You fight like a Blade, kit.”

“Surprise, Mom.”

“Indeed.”

Sarcasm, Keith discovered, is one of the few things he shared with the Marmorans apart from his blood.

Air burns his lungs. The atmosphere on this whale is richer in oxygen than Earth. The first time he removed his helmet, he almost vomited from the shock of it.

“Let me show you how to fight like our people,” Krolia says. “I will show you how to fight like a Khul.”

“Okay.”

Krolia gets her feet under her, gouging the earth as she does. Keith shrugs his shoulders and copies her stance.

He’s on his stomach in less than ten seconds, breathing in grass and dirt, coughing on the air being forced from him.

The déjà vu feels like a shockwave. He’s been here _many_ times before.

“Solid,” he wheezes. “Maybe slower next time?”

Laughter above him. It doesn’t grate his ears anymore. “Sure, kit.”

— K —

A reprimand:

Kolivan, snarling at him. The hiss of the airlock closing, the roar of the engines as they speed away from the site.

“How could you be so reckless? Regris sealed his fate, you should have left him alone! Knowledge or—”

“Okay, seriously? Fuck your motto.” Anger, burning in his fingers. Shock, like ice in his veins. The ringing in his ears could be from the explosion or the way Keith hit the floor after.

 _“Keith.”_ Not ‘little one’, his proper human name.

Keith bristles. He hasn’t had _that_ treatment since he joined. “ _No.”_

 _“Yes,”_ Kolivan says just as firmly, handing landing on Keith’s shoulder.

“Where’s your talk about family now?” Keith spits, stepping out of Kolivan’s reach.

Because he remembers how the Blade recruits were inducted with a victory lap of the base, and then told to consider each other brothers and sisters with the words, “You fight for each other, you die for each other. Knowledge or Death.”

Kolivan’s mask does not shift, but he does not say anything for a moment. It isn’t a victory, but it still tastes like the echo of one in Keith’s mouth, and he needs it more than anything right now.

“There is no victory in losing more than necessary,” Kolivan tells him.

Keith stands there, seconds away from imploding.

Then Kolivan’s hand comes up again, landing on Keith’s head. The weight is enormous, suffocating.

Keith flees.

— K —

A conversation:

“What _did_ Kolivan say to you about the mission?”

“If you’re asking if he mentioned you,” Keith says as he stokes the fire, “then no.”

Krolia snorts, combing fingers through her hair to detangle it. “Figures. That bastard.”

Keith gives her a look. It’s an empty insult, but still. His admiration of Kolivan demands he shows some kind of respect even now.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” says Krolia. “Kolivan and I have been in each other’s lives for years. We know each other very well.” And she turns her attention to her hair.

A pretence. Keith wonders how after years apart, they seem to share so many habits.

“Tell me why you joined the Blades,” she says, switching into a new topic with as much finesse as exiting lightspeed in an old X-9 cruiser.

Keith did it once with the Blades. He was bruised for a whole movement afterwards from being thrown around.

Fair question. Why leave the paladins he came into space with?

Easy answer. Even now the disappointment and anger he received after returning too late is a wound.

“Made sense, I guess. I never had a family before.”

And it’s a lie, because the paladins were the closest thing he ever had to a family.

Krolia pauses, then crosses to him to kneel. Carefully, she presses her forehead to his cheek. Keith saw a couple of the Blades do this to each other once or twice. It’s a gesture for family members.

Inexplicably, he wants to cry. Again.

“I’m here now, kit,” says Krolia, pressing even closer and winding her arms around his shaking shoulders.

He’s so tired. He’s so _fucking_ tired.

“Mom?” he says as this ridiculous wave of sadness rips through him and burns his eyes.

Krolia’s arms tighten even further. “I’m here.”

  
  


— K —

An apology:

Quietude, a rarity on this base. Light from the colliding bodies above his head make Keith’s eyes water if he stares too long at them.

Movement behind him, the air shifting as the person comes to stand behind him.

He knows it’s Kolivan.

“Perhaps,” his leader intones, “I was too harsh.”

Keith’s brow creases. The hair on the back of his neck tingles. “Kolivan…”

“The first death is the hardest,” Kolivan says, not giving an inch. “I remember mine.”

And that reminder that it’s going to happen again breaks Keith open in an entirely new kind of way.

“Does it get easier?” He hates how small his voice sounds.

Kolivan does not answer, and that tells Keith more than enough. The Marmora value truth and transparency. 

Kolivan’s hand touches Keith’s shoulder before curling into his hair.

“This is getting long, little one.”

Keith warms at the return of the nickname. He hadn’t realised how much it hurt to lose.

A beat passes, before Kolivan huffs and weaves both hands into Keith’s hair now. “This should be braided.”

“Okay.”

It takes mere minutes but Keith counts it down in his head anyway, hyper aware of Kolivan’s movements. He can’t remember the last time he was taken care of like this. Shiro was probably the last person, and that was long before he burned all his bridges with the team to join the Blades.

There has to be a name for the heavy weight in Keith’s chest.

It feels like with each twist of his hair it gets knocked loose.

It’ll fall to the ground at this rate.

“There,” says Kolivan when he’s done, pushing the braid over Keith’s shoulder.

Keith dares to turn to meet his leader’s eyes.

Haltingly, in Common, he says, _“D’ak jem.”_ Thank you.

— K —

A discovery:

Arms, holding him. They shouldn’t be strong enough, given they spent an eternity in bondage. Above him, his mother takes some of the weight, her arm braced against them both.

“Kolivan,” Krolia sobs openly against his neck.

The Galra feel in extremes and Keith gives himself to it freely right now, as he and his mother hold Kolivan up.

“What are you doing here?” says Kolivan weakly.

Krolia does not stop crying, which makes Keith’s own eyes well up. He can feel the rumble of Kolivan’s chest, the quiet sound of a sob shaking free from his leader’s throat.

It makes him curl in closer. Relief is seeping into all the cracks and breaks in him, soothing the hurt for now.

It takes both of them to sit Kolivan down amongst the rubble to gain heat from the fire.

The skin around his wrists is rubbed raw and bruised. He’s going to be okay. Pidge said so.

Krolia’s eyes are still too shiny in the firelight as she wraps them in bandages. Keith helps her just so he doesn’t have to look at her, so he can ignore the feeling of being stripped raw.

“Whatever happened to putting the mission first?” says Kolivan quietly.

Keith flinches. He doesn’t know who it’s directed at.

“We’ve lost too many,” Krolia answers. “I won’t live with the knowledge that I left a Blade here without help.” Then, “Especially _you.”_

Keith’s heart aches. They used to talk about it on the whale, how important Kolivan and his mother considered each other.

Kolivan growls, soft, barely a reprimand. “You should have.”

 _“Hush,”_ says Krolia.

“Krolia…”

When nothing further is said, Keith looks up. Kolivan is touching one of the marks on his mother’s face and that—that’s the limit.

Keith feels like he’s choking on it. “I’ll be outside,” he tells them.

The wolf takes him before he even thinks it. They sit outside and Keith puts his head between his knees. Tries to get air into his lungs. Tries not to drown on the emotion instead.

— K —

An encouragement:

A wall of all the fallen Blades. Keith, running his fingers over the inscriptions, wishing his Common was better. There’s no universal language, but enough Galra speak Common to get by, and the rest who don’t can always attempt English. The Olkari are known for their prowess in translation pods to overcome the hurdle but Keith likes to practice his basic Galran.

 _“I'm sorry,”_ Keith murmurs in Galran, touching the plate of Regris.

Out of everyone on this base, Regris and him were the closest. Never close enough as Keith’s paladin family, but close enough. Close enough for the loss of him to still sting around the edges.

It’s been _phoebs._ Keith doesn’t know why it still hurts.

No one ever talked about this when they were all in space fighting, but now that they’re back on Earth, it’s all Keith can think of: losing.

A hand on his shoulder. Kolivan.

“Little one,” he says.

The nickname does not make Keith bristle anymore. It’s a source of comfort, to some extent.

“Kolivan,” he says, dipping his head respectfully.

Never mind the fact that both Kolivan _and_ his mother said he doesn’t have to do that anymore. Old habits die hard.

“You’ve come so far.”

Denial runs up Keith’s spine, spiky hot. “I had a _lot_ of help.”

He did. He had his paladins and Shiro and his Blade siblings and his mom and Kolivan. The Blades would tell him that they were symbiotic and it’s true: they’re all made up of each other.

“You’ve still come so far,” Krolia says this time, joining them.

Keith wishes he’d inherited the heightened hearing from her.

The word he wants to use in Common has far too much of a gutteral ‘h’ in it for Keith to want to attempt right now. His throat is still sore from being intubated after the last robeast. He switches to his mother’s dialect instead.

 _Stid’aka._ Maybe.

Krolia looks at him, eyes going soft. She holds out her arm.

Keith doesn’t even hesitate. He steps into it, leans up to press his forehead against her cheek. A soothing rumble from Kolivan, before Keith feels both of them being enveloped by him.

 _Oh,_ he thinks, tears pricking his eyes. _So this is what it feels like._

Krolia purrs and nuzzles him, Kolivan smooths a hand down his shoulder. They must look strange, two giant Galra with their human-passing son between them.

When he starts to cry, the embrace only tightens. It should hurt. It doesn’t. Instead it feels like he’s being buried by it, suffocated, remade. Keith gladly lets it.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/sepiacigarettes)


End file.
